


Give me something familiar

by thought



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb Widogast's Backstory, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trent Ikithon is his own warning, canon typical burning people alive, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27611543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: There is still fire in his hands.There is still someone screaming.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	Give me something familiar

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, [14CombatGeishas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas) went through this with a fine-toothed comb.  
> Also, in my heart there is a future where mollymauk is alive and Essek travels with the Nein, let me live.

“Unacceptable, try again.”

Bren breathes in, holds it for seven seconds, breathes out. That’s fine. He can do this again. 10.6 seconds and an increase in forty degrees at maximum temperature, but that’s unacceptable, sure. Yes, Master Ikithon. Bren will kill _another_ fucking drunkard too stupid to keep his mouth shut in the presence of foreign spies. He has absolutely _nothing_ better to do with his day than stand here in the stone basement beneath the manor house and clean up the trash to satisfy Trent’s hyper-fixation to detail. Fire is an efficient weapon, a difference of a few seconds isn’t going to make anyone less dead.

The man in the cell in front of him is saying something, but the words are just noise. When Bren meets his gaze and holds it — never let an opportunity to practice pass you by — his form wavers like a heat haze over cobblestone. Bren extends his hands, and his forearms do not ache — of course they don’t. They _burn_. They always burn; the pain never settles into the kindness of an ache.

The fire blackens Bren’s fingertips. 

Trent says it’s a gift, the way it comes so naturally to him. Trent says it makes him superior, naturally so. Trent says he is nothing more than a barbaric beast if he cannot identify each reactant of his fire, the precise pressure he must use when he reaches out with his sense of self to the air and the earth around him, the exact time and heat and force of each bit of flame. Though he would never say it, it makes Bren think of the schoolmaster asking him to show his arithmetic work. Things have always come easily to him, and to deconstruct the process into its individual parts simply slows it down, makes something that ought to be beautiful and instinctive into an awkward, clunky thing.

Bren thinks of each particle of air heating around his hands, the blue-white flare, the rapid disintegration of everything in his path. Something cold trickles down his neck and something warm tickles down his cheek. It’s always hot in the basement after he’s been practicing for a while. Trent says he should be able to control that, too, focus the radiant heat until there is no excess spill-off.

The body in front of him curls inwards and blackens. He can hear screams, the other prisoners must be awake; easy enough to ignore.

He pulls energy through the foreign presence under the skin of his forearms. The flames should burn hotter. They don’t. Something flickers off to his side — movement, but he can still hear Trent’s even breaths behind him. Keeping the fire burning, he flicks his fingers out and catches whoever, whatever it is moving in the shadows — not an object, blood and air and warmth — his hold on the creature is almost absent-minded, but he forces himself to take the milliseconds for a more deliberate restraint, arcane threads binding whatever it is to the very fabric of reality and keeping it still until he has the time to deal with it. He remembers the first and only time Astrid accidentally crushed a tiefling’s lungs in her enthusiasm. He’s not sure _Astrid_ remembers that night, but the lesson stayed with all of them nonetheless.

“Unacceptable,” Trent says, “try again.” 

There is still fire in his hands. There is still someone screaming.

“Unacceptable,” says Trent. “Unacceptable. Unacceptable. Unacceptable.” And gods, Caleb _knows_ , you don’t have to keep reminding him.

Another drop of water slides down his neck from the dripping cave ceiling and for a moment it’s the only thing he can concentrate on. His hold on the thing in the shadows fizzles. His arms don’t hurt. Everything is quiet.

The fire stays. The fire always stays.

Bren appreciates the reliability.

Another drop slides down his skin, and–

“I think I am bleeding,” he says.

“Unacceptable,” says Trent.

“Es tut mir Leid.” 

“Caleb.” 

Someone is touching his hands. He can smell burning flesh. Someone else takes his wrist and— 

“Fuck, Don’t!” 

Trent is cutting into him, he is putting something beneath the skin of Bren’s arm and the rope holds his wrist pinned to the table because he is too weak to keep it there himself. He forces his jaw to stay loose so he doesn’t bite his tongue off, which is a convenient mental exercise; the tenser he is the more it hurts. He knows this. Trent makes a notation in his spellbook and— 

“Caleb!” 

The energy courses through his hands stronger than he could have ever imagined. He watches the fire. It’s not the only light, but the other light is — him, it’s coming from under his skin — irrelevant. He is strong, now. They were all strong. The flames fan out from his fingertips, white-blue and just as cold to the touch, his fingertips are blackened all the time now, the ash doesn’t wipe off anymore.

Someone cries out. It sounds like a person intimately familiar with pain. 

It sounds like all of them.

“Let go of him, you can’t!” 

He looks down. There is mud on his boots.

“Unacceptable.” 

“We’re safe now,” someone says.

“You can stand down.” 

Caleb shakes his head furiously. His entire body feels numb and shaky, like being drunk without any of the good parts. He gasps in air frantically, curling in on himself. He can still feel Trent’s gaze on his back.

“Fuck,” says someone — Nott. _Veth._ Veth is beside him and her hands are blistered and burned. Caleb spreads his fingers in front of his face and the fire grounds him, he needs it, but he forces it away. 

What he needs doesn’t matter. 

What he needs is rarely what other people think he needs.

“Are you back with us?” Essek is on his other side, robes torn and dirty, leaning against the wall with an arm wrapped tightly around an outcropping of rock. His feet are on the ground and Caleb can see the strain in his jaw even if he can’t see the trembling in his legs under his robes. There are burns across the soft skin at his throat, the elegant silver needlework on the collar of his robes black and flaking.

“Sure,” says Caleb. “Ja.” 

He looks in front of him and where there were once enemies there is now only ash. He had it down to 7.55 seconds by the end, he remembers. 

It’s like riding a bicycle.

“The others?” he asks, closing his eyes.

“Safe,” says Veth, shortly.

“Cowards,” says Essek, at the same time.

Veth lets out a low growl, but she doesn’t contradict him.

Caleb opens his eyes again and looks over Veth towards the cave entrance. He can see Beau standing guard, Molly pacing around her, hands in his hair, tail lashing.

“The others are outside,” Veth says. “I promise they’re safe.” 

That’s good. Fucking somebody should be. And better those left with him have the armour to withstand the danger. Veth is gritting her teeth through wrapping bandages around her palms. Her fingers are largely unscathed. There’s a difference between self-sacrifice and self-sabotage; they have reinforced that for each other for years. She’d only touched him with her fingertips once, early on, and he’d gone hungry for a week to afford the healer.

Caleb exhales shakily, forces himself to take slow, even breaths, feels his ribcage expand under his book holsters. He’s dizzy, and the floor keeps shifting beneath him like the deck of a ship. Essek and Veth stand on either side of him and he wants to touch them, wants to use their solidity to fortify his own, but he can’t be sure his hands are safe.

He takes a step forward and staggers, one knee hitting the ground hard, small stones bruising his flesh. Essek reaches one hand towards him. Veth swears and almost grabs him, then pulls back, cradling her hands against her chest. Essek tries to cast something and the magic fizzles in his palm, energy clearly spent.

Caleb looks up at them both, and lets himself fall back, half crouched against the wall. His head is spinning. “So,” he says, aiming for levity and definitely hitting manic, if nothing else. “We just live in this fucking cave now, ja?”


End file.
